Popular movies that involve gun violence now receive parental ratings that allow open access in theaters and attract large audiences. One concern about exposure to such movies is that the gun use by major characters will encourage imitation by youth. However, such gun use may not always be seen as acceptable, especially if it is seen as unjustified. Here, we computed inter-subject synchronization of 26 late adolescents’ brain activity obtained with functional MRI while they watched a series of 4 90-sec segments of first character development and then violent action from movies with either justified or unjustified gun violence in counterbalanced order. Synchronization of brain activity extended from the early projection cortices to areas involved in higher-order vision, emotion, and attention. We observed enhanced synchronization in frontal regions, including orbital frontal cortex (OFC), as well as sensory regions while watching violent action compared to discussion among movie characters, suggesting disapproval of violence. However, neural synchronization patterns differed between violence justification conditions. Justified violence elicited greater synchronization of limbic and subcortical circuity, suggesting more emotional identification with characters engaged in justified violence. Unjustified violence elicited more cognitive and emotional processing, suggesting that the action elicited more cognitive conflict in response to the unjustified behavior of the violent actors. The results reveal the existence of a common spatial organization while viewing violence in high-level cortical areas, and that neural synchronization patterns are related to the nature of the violent events. The brain responses we observed suggest that justified violence portrayed in popular films may be acceptable to audiences despite the activation of brain regions, such as OFC, that have been associated with moral disapproval